On a six-month trip to India, when Annie Brady was supposed to be taking a break from design operate, she identified herself filling notebooks with textile patterns. “It’s a weird compulsion,” she says. “There’s no other decision for me but drawing.”

Annie, who at the moment lives in Rhode Island, began drawing as soon as she could hold a pencil. “My books in school were fully covered with doodles,” she says. “I’d try to listen to the teachers, but it was like my hand would take over.” She went on to earn a degree in design and style and illustration—an endeavor exactly where covering books with doodles was truly encouraged—and worked as a graphic designer for the style company Avoca in her native Ireland. The firm has their personal mill and Annie designed some prints for fabrics. “That actually clicked with me,” she says, adding that her travels all through India added fuel to her fabric obsession.

There’s lots of all-natural light for sewing in the loft apartment where Annie and her husband reside.

About two years ago she and her husband came to the U.S. for his work. They arrived in Boston during a winter of huge snow storms. “We have been questioning if we’d created the proper choice, but then summer came and weather right here was so considerably greater than Ireland,” she says. “Ireland’s a lovely nation, but there’s 1 thing that is grim and that’s the weather.

The move also gave her time to concentrate on her design and style operate, as well as introduced her to a larger market for her work. Today Annie’s illustrations are identified by means of Minted.com on wrapping paper, greeting cards, lampshades, and art prints. And now, on Moda fabric! Her very first line, Big Sky, was inspired by spending time in nature. “My adore of hiking and the outdoors reflects itself in my work,” she says.

Annie’s creativity and work ethic just may be genetic—her sister went to Style Institute of Technology in New York and recently opened a florist organization, her mother studied piano and at age 70 started a Montessori college, and her father, a retired schoolteacher, writes novels. (Annie’s brother is an engineer, exactly where Annie says he does drawing of yet another sort.) Creativity was encouraged when Annie and her siblings were young, but constantly with an eye toward practicality. Even even though her parents wanted their young children to have steady careers, Annie remembers her mother telling her that income can’t acquire happiness. “That nevertheless rings in my ears and fairly probably influenced my alternatives as I navigate self-employment,” she says.

Annie’s usually doodling. These flowers bloomed even though she was speaking on the phone.

Annie’s sister Brigid, whose sewing abilities included producing her wedding dress on their grandmother’s treadle sewing machine, will assist Annie with sample sewing. “I’m excited about operating with her—the final time we collaborated was for my wedding 3 years ago,” says Annie, who is also arranging to begin screen printing upholstery fabrics in the studio portion of her loft.

Brigid and Annie

But for now she’s focusing on her fabrics for Moda. “I went to Industry 3 years ago to check it out and getting a fabric designer was a dream,” she says.” I really like the way you can tell a story by means of a collection of fabric. Now I’ll be launching a collection and I have to pinch myself, it seems so surreal.”